A review by ralowe
Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi

3.0

helen oyeyemi is an incredibly talented writer, who knows how to make a sentence twist and possesses a fondness for myth, but this novel is choked by the threat of depoliticized heterosexual violence. like it doesn't seem to be motivated by a feminist sense of justice, say like in toni morrison and gayl jones, or done with any type of aesthetic flair for its own sake. i don't think you have to be queer to find it tedious, we all know about it. but it seems to be trying to make the point about the uncovering of secrets, and that the big secret is that secrets are always adulterous! i could never figure out what was the investment in showing how miserable being straight is when you don't actually have to or want to be. but this steers so much of the relations between genders in oyeyemi's writing. i mean why. my biggest gripe was the dodgy focus and fracturedness of the whole novel but i believe that is more the fault of a publishing industry that doesn't want to give a black woman writer a break, won't allow space so the magic realism can be less of a parlor trick. she tries to make it work with the short story thing but i'd like to see oyeyemi given the free reign of a proust (who is mentioned) to really unleash her genius over a 1k-page tome or two.